


Full Moon Morning

by Leyenn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Padfoot and Prongs, waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Moon Morning

It was the glint of brass in the air that alerted him. Up, down. Up, down. Up - caught.

Ah.

He swept in closer and hovered for a second, rearranging a mud-splattered robe so as not to disembowel himself on getting down.

"What's up?"

The boy scrunched up below him on the grass flipped his Knut into the air again and snatched it back with an angry, grasping palm. "Nothing."

He held back a smile and shoved sweaty, wind-blown hair out of his face. "Filthy liar."

Sirius refused to look at him. The Knut went flying again. "Bugger off, Potter."

With a shrug, James set his Thunderclap 300 against a knot in the nearest tree and flopped down next to him. "If you want."

"Well, I want."

James smirked, a little fondly and a little more with amusement. Sirius was so easy to read. "You want Moony, I bet."

"You ever bet on that and I'll break your knees with that precious stick-"

"Worries you, then, does it?"

Sirius gave him a flat look. "What."

"One come shot too many and we could have a Moony Mark Two on our hands, that's what."

"Please." Sirius grunted and shoved one hand into the dirt to get himself up. "Can't exactly get him up the spout, can I?"

James grabbed for the willow of his broomstick with the closest hand, found it, and swept a wide low arc that brought a stumbling Padfoot back to his knees. "He could give you a new little wolfy playmate in your head three nights a month, and don't pretend you don't think about it."

"Why should I pretend?" Sirius scowled at him and picked a stone absently out of one skinned palm. "If you can figure it out then it's really bleeding obvious, isn't it?"

"I take it you're taking steps."

"He offered to _gag_ himself." Sirius actually sounded hurt by that. "God, it's just disgusting."

"Some people like that sort of thing," he said mildly.

The other boy growled, almost dog-like, and more threw than dropped his head into his hands. Grassy fingers tore softly at his dark hair. "I mean, it's kind of - it's just hard - why would he ever think of wanting to do that?!"

James tilted his head in half-serious contemplation. "Well, obviously you're such a manly specimen-"

Sirius smacked him. It was a pretty hard smack round the side of the head, and James thought he might really have meant it. "Shut up."

He shrugged and smiled crookedly, trying not to be obvious about working out his newly-kinked neck muscle. "All right."

The half-raised hand stopped halfway back to his head. "'All right'? That's all you've got to say?"

He gave up being discreet and prodded at his neck with two fingers. "What d'you want? Moony's going critical over you, anyone can see that." He leaned back, shoving his elbows into the uneven grass. "I'd rather know what you're doing about it."

The flush that covered Sirius' face said they were doing rather more than he'd been thinking. "We don't have to report to you, Prongs."

"I thought you might, out of common courtesy." He tried to answer more with amusement than fast-buried agitation. "Look, what does it matter if he puts a gag over his face or you do it backwards - dog style, even." He was quite proud of that joke for a moment. He'd not even had to think about it. "Might suit you. He can't be the only wer-"

"Don't bloody say it!"

"Well, he can't be the only one in the world that wants a shag," he finished as if Sirius hadn't almost swallowed his tongue in panic.

"You don't _know_," Sirius told him bluntly. "This isn't as easy as chasing down Lily Evans under the Quidditch stands. This is _hard_. It's always hard. It's the two of us, _roommates_, best mates, a part of the group, and I can't stand the way it looks to everyone else. I hardly give a shit but Moony, he's different - he's sensitive, he picks up on things. It's only nineteen-seventy-five," he muttered as a lame sort of finish. "We're not supposed to be at it at all. If we were Muggles I'd be in jail. It's not the same as you."

James accepted that with a moment of quiet, thinking of something to say. "What makes you think I wouldn't be chasing Lily Evans even if she was a wer- um, _guy_, anyway?"

"Not if she was a _guy_ with a dick." Sirius always got defensive when he was agitated, especially if it was James doing the agitating.

"We can't all have your taste," he retorted brightly.

That almost earned him a smile. From Remus it would have, but Sirius was better at being pissed off than he was, having had a family full of practice.

"You're such a prat, James," he whined tiredly, but there was no real spite in his voice. "Don't even appreciate what you have. One day you and Lily'll get dolled up in front of Dumbledore and make dumb vows no man in his sane mind would make. Then you'll bugger off to some little cottage somewhere and have all the kids she can cadge out of you and live happily ever after, and I'll still be just the slightly stupid Pureblood gone good who shags a werewolf."

James opened his mouth to protest that Padfoot wasn't even slightly stupid, or that he'd never even considered making dumb vows to Lily Evans, not even when she licked her lips at him that way across the breakfast table, and then clamped it shut again.

Sirius chuckled bitterly and stood up. Behind him the Willow was suspiciously still - James noticed, being observant like that on the rare occasions he was made to shut up, that he'd not even had to look round to know the right moment.

He watched Sirius cross the lawn in determined silence, jaw locked, footsteps measured as if he trod the same exact square inches of ground every month. He watched the way Sirius checked the area with his eyes and his ears, almost with his whole body, before finally crouching ready and giving the signal.

He watched Sirius lurch forward and snatch Moony... _Remus_, out of the hole and into the sunlight, hugging him tightly; and Remus hugging back, grasping at him like a starving man. Sirius' voice came floating across the greenery, more a tone than real words, probably lying that it would be all right. A moment later there was the charm that fluffed up his hair and tidied his robes, mended the tears of wolf teeth visible in one loose fabric arm.

Something had to be done, he considered. He wasn't certain what, but he wasn't worried. James Potter could always come up with something.

  


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